{"id":7600,"date":"2026-08-28T10:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7600"},"modified":"2026-08-28T10:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:10:11","slug":"flailing-acs-reveals-the-fatal-flaw-that-endangers-nyc-kids-in-its-want-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7600","title":{"rendered":"Flailing ACS reveals the fatal flaw that endangers NYC kids \u2014 in its want ads"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s no secret that the Administration for Children\u2019s Services has been falling down on the job.<\/p>\n

Read more It\u2019s the socialism, stupid: The DSA may cost Dems their blue wave<\/a><\/p>\n

Adonis Jarvis \u2014 the nonverbal, autistic 16-year-old who starved to death this year while in the care of his mother and grandmother \u2014 is only the latest tragedy in a long list of kids who were known to the city\u2019s child-welfare agency but were nevertheless left in a dangerous situation.<\/p>\n

Why is ACS so often missing signs of risk?<\/p>\n

One reason is its workforce.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, ACS posted that the agency is \u201cactively recruiting for the Child Protective Specialist (CPS) role.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a starting salary of almost $60,000, a city pension plan, health insurance, a deferred compensation plan, 37 paid days off during the first year of employment and openings in every borough, you\u2019d think they\u2019d have no lack of strong candidates.<\/p>\n

Not so, in part because of the agency\u2019s head-scratching recruitment strategy and hiring criteria.<\/p>\n

For instance, ACS requires a bachelor\u2019s degree with at least 24 credits in fields including social work, psychology, sociology, criminal justice, education, nursing or cultural anthropology.<\/p>\n

Sure, some courses in criminal justice or nursing might help a front-line child protective specialist.<\/p>\n

But sociology and cultural anthropology? Who are they kidding?<\/p>\n

To be clear, the job of an ACS investigator is to enter a potentially dangerous home, gather evidence, ask difficult questions and make life-or-death decisions about potential risks to a child.<\/p>\n

Who would you send?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint: The NYPD doesn\u2019t require recruits to have a bachelor\u2019s degree at all, let alone one in a useless field focused on woke notions of race, class and gender.<\/p>\n

The Police Department does<\/em>, however, require an exam that measures the skills law enforcement wants in candidates.<\/p>\n

ACS has an exam, too \u2014 technically.<\/p>\n

But it also hires employees provisionally without asking them to take the test, let alone pass it.<\/p>\n

Those employees can go through ACS training and be placed in the field indefinitely; it only becomes a problem if someone who has<\/em> passed the test comes along and \u201cbumps\u201d them out of the position.<\/p>\n

With a vacancy rate of 10% or even higher, that\u2019s unlikely to happen often.<\/p>\n

Yet the exam measures important skills like problem sensitivity, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning (all required by the NYPD, too) \u2014 core abilities for a child-protective specialist.<\/p>\n

Problem sensitivity means spotting when something is wrong or likely to go wrong.<\/p>\n

Inductive reasoning includes being able to take a general idea or policy \u2014 such as an agency rule about when a situation should be escalated \u2014 and apply it to a particular family situation.<\/p>\n

Read more Five Long Island \u2018mole people\u2019 seen crawling into manhole \u2014 week after headlamp-wearing trio emerged in NYC<\/a><\/p>\n

And deductive reasoning involves taking specific observations about different families and using them to spot broader patterns about the dangers children are experiencing in our city.<\/p>\n

The idea that ACS employees are bypassing such aptitude tests is absurd.<\/p>\n

Over the past several years, ACS has continued to ignore clear risks to kids from parents who are suffering from substance abuse or severe mental illness, leaving children in homes with adults who are unwilling or unable to care for them.<\/p>\n

Some of this is no doubt the result of leadership that believes drug use is just another lifestyle choice, or that a black child should remain in a dangerous home as a means of fighting systemic racism.<\/p>\n

But some of it is because decisions are being made by folks who are just not very good at assessing risk.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just how ACS is screening candidates; it\u2019s who is being recruited in the first place.<\/p>\n

A recent ad for the New York City Bridge Exam, the test you take for a variety of civil-service positions, was aimed at anyone who wants to be a \u201cchild protective specialist,\u201d \u201cmaintenance worker,\u201d \u201cclerical associate\u201d or \u201csecretary.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if these positions, and the skills required for them, are interchangeable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Compare that to the approach of former ACS Director John Mattingly, who sought to increase recruitment under Mayor Mike Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

Mattingly launched a subway ad campaign that asked, \u201cAre you strong enough . . . Are you smart enough . . . Are you kind enough to be a Child Protection Specialist?\u201d<\/p>\n

Applications immediately spiked: About 1,100 resum\u00e9s came into the agency in the month after the ads ran, compared to 5,800 in all of the previous year.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Mattingly told me the current strategy of advertising the job along with secretarial and janitorial positions is \u201cuseless\u201d and seems \u201ccrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: ACS has a reputation problem.<\/p>\n

Who wants to work for an organization that is tarred as needlessly intrusive, racist or downright incompetent?<\/p>\n

Child-welfare agencies, here and elsewhere, are caught in a downward spiral \u2014 the worse their reputation, the worse their applicant pool becomes.<\/p>\n

If City Hall wants to turn ACS around, it needs to raise standards, not lower them.<\/p>\n

Read more Furious Wisconsin parent cited for tripping football player, 9, who was running for touchdown<\/a><\/p>\n

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Administration for Children’s Services, life-or-death decisions about kids’ safety are being made by folks who are just not very good at assessing risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-naomi-schaefer-riley","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nFlailing ACS reveals the fatal flaw that endangers NYC kids \u2014 in its want ads - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7600\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flailing ACS reveals the fatal flaw that endangers NYC kids \u2014 in its want ads - 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